Three people at the same studio count its members on the same day. The first pulls everyone holding anything current: 330. The second counts everyone with a monthly payment scheduled: 230. The third applies the studio's written rules: 246. Nobody slipped. They answered three different questions, because the word member is doing several jobs at once, and until a studio writes down which of them count, no two of its reports will agree.
Below are the seven edge cases that move the count, each with a one-line rule, and a rule sheet to copy at the end. The rules matter less than the writing down: there is no universally correct definition, only a consistent one. One invented studio runs through all of it: Alturra Studios, 240 members on March 1 at $169 a month. During March 18 people joined, 12 canceled and 4 froze, and on March 31 the studio had 242 active members and 4 paused.
Member definitions in one minute
- A member holds a current membership on the day you count. Paid monthly or in full, active or paused inside your freeze limit. Everyone else holding something current is a customer.
- Seven edge cases move the count. Class packs, comps, staff accounts and intro offers come out; paid-in-full members and short freezes stay in; a plan switch counts once. At Alturra those rules are the whole gap between 330, 230 and 246.
- Write it down once, and date it. Then apply the same page at the start and the end of every period, in every report. A rule you would argue with does less harm than a rule that changes between reports.
| Edge case | A member? | Alturra, March 31 | What the rule protects |
|---|---|---|---|
| Class pack | no: a customer | 60 holders | churn, which pack holders dilute |
| Comp | no: a guest | 5 comps | dues per member |
| Staff account | no: capacity only | 7 accounts | retention, which staff accounts flatter |
| Freeze | yes, as paused, while under 60 days | 4 paused | the count now, and churn at day 60 |
| Paid-in-full | yes, every month of the term | 12 members | the count in the months nobody bills her |
| Plan switch | yes: she stayed | 7 in March | churn and joins, which a switch inflates |
| Intro offer | no: a trial | 12 holders | the total, which undecided people swell |
| Members | 242 active + 4 paused | 246 | the number churn and retention start from |
What counts as an active member?
A member holds a current membership on the day you count, paid monthly or in full for a term, and an active member is one whose membership is not frozen. A paused member is frozen but still inside your freeze limit: still a member, counted in a column of her own.
Everyone else holding something current is a customer: a pack holder, someone on an intro offer, a comp, a staff account. They count for class capacity and attendance, and they belong on the studio's lists, just not in the number that churn, retention and dues per member start from. Every count also needs a date. Alturra counts at the close of the first and last day of each month, so March has a start and an end.
Here is Alturra's March 31, walked from each of the two lists to the count its rules give.
Four groups come off the long list and two go back onto the billing list, and both walks end at 246. That is the test of a rule sheet: start from any list, apply the rules, and you arrive at the same number. The sections below take the edge cases one at a time.
Do class pack holders count as members?
No: a pack holder is a customer who bought a quantity of classes, not a member. She paid for ten visits and promised nothing after the tenth, so she can never cancel. She just does not buy the next pack.
That is what makes folding packs in so costly: they dilute churn without anyone staying longer. Alturra had 60 people holding an open pack on March 1, and 60 again on March 31, though not the same 60. Put them in the starting count and March's 12 cancellations divide by 300 instead of 240.
Count pack holders as customers in their own column, and give them numbers of their own: the rebuy rate (of the packs finished this month, how many were followed by another purchase) and pack-to-membership conversion. The class packs versus memberships piece works through both, and why the month a pack sells and the months it is used are different months. Drop-ins and ClassPass or Wellhub visits follow the same rule: customers of a class, not members.
Do comped memberships count as members?
No: a comp is a guest of the studio, counted in class capacity and attendance but never in the member count. She takes a real spot and is often a real relationship: an instructor's partner, a physical therapist who sends clients, a trade with the coffee shop next door. She pays nothing and cannot cancel, because a comp ends when the studio ends it.
Counted as members, comps lower every per-member number without anyone paying less. Alturra has 5. On March 1 its 240 members paid $40,560 in dues, $169.00 a member; count the comps in and the same dues over 245 people read $165.55, and the average slides again each time the comp list grows.
Keep comps on one list with a reason beside each name, and read the list whenever you read prices. The room still counts them: a comp in a full class is a spot someone else could have booked.
Do staff and instructor accounts count as members?
No: staff accounts count for class capacity and nothing else. Instructors who take class, the desk team's house accounts and the owner's own profile fill spots like anyone, so they belong on the roster; they never cancel, so in the member count they make retention look better every month they are there.
Alturra has 7: five instructors who take class, the desk lead and the owner. The instructor in Thursday's 6pm is one of them. Flag each account as staff once, so no report counts it by accident, and check the flags whenever someone joins or leaves the team.
Does a frozen member still count as a member?
Yes, in a paused column of her own, until she passes your freeze limit without coming back. A frozen member is not paying, so she is not active, and she has not canceled, so she is not gone; without a rule she sits in limbo and the count drifts for months.
Alturra's limit is 60 days: under it a freeze is a pause, and at day 60 with no return it is a loss. Four members froze in March, so on March 31 all four are members, counted as paused. The rule does its real work in May, for any of them who has not come back.
Read the three rules at the foot of the figure. Counted as active, the four disappear into a total that still looks like 246 paying members. Counted as lost the day they freeze, March churn reads 6.7% for people who may be back in class by May. Counted as paused, the count is right today and the decision arrives on a date. The freeze policy piece covers the return date to agree when a freeze begins, and the retention rate formula shows this one rule moving March from 93.3% to 95.0%.
Pick the limit once and hold it. Sixty days or ninety matters less than counting the same freeze the same way in every report, month after month.
What to do this week:
- List every current freeze with the day it began.
- Write each one's day 60 beside it, or the day your own limit falls.
- At the next month-end count, put paused members in a column of their own.
Does a paid-in-full member count every month?
Yes: she is a member every month of her term, and she is lost only if the term ends without a renewal. She paid once, so a count built from the billing run misses her in eleven months out of twelve.
Alturra's 12 paid-in-full members each bought a year up front last September, at 12 × $169, so their terms run to the end of August. On March 31 they are seven months in, and all 12 are members.
Two things follow. Mid-term she cannot cancel, so the group holds the count steady all year and then every non-renewal lands in the month the terms end: read that month's churn with the renewals in mind, not as a sudden bad month. And the money needs a line of its own. The $24,336 arrived in September, but as dues it is $169 a head each month; booked as September's recurring revenue, it makes one month spike and leaves eleven looking empty. How the books record it is your accountant's call, and the chart of accounts piece works through the same choice for class packs.
Is a plan switch a cancellation?
No: a member who changes plans stayed, so record neither a cancellation nor a join. In March 7 Alturra members changed plans, five to a smaller one and two to a bigger one, and where a report shows a switch as one membership ending and another starting, each of the seven is counted twice, once on each side of the month.
The count on March 31 is 246 either way, which is why this edge case hides: the damage is all in the rates. Churn reads 7.9% instead of 5.0%, and retention by the formula falls from 95.0% to 92.1%, in a month when nobody extra left. Before you count a cancellation, check whether the same person started another plan in its place. If she did, count her once and watch what the switch did to her dues: a move down a plan is a pricing signal, not a loss, and matching each member to the plan that fits her pace is lever three of the five levers on current members.
Does an intro offer make someone a member?
No: an intro offer is a trial, and she enters the count as a new member on the day she buys a membership. Alturra's is $99 for 30 days of unlimited classes, and on March 31 twelve people were inside one.
They book like members and fill spots like members, and the point of the offer is that some of them become members. Count them early and the total includes people who have not decided yet; the ones who walk away then read as cancellations of something they never bought. Count intros as their own funnel, from the day each offer starts. Intro offer conversion covers the four decisions that change that rate.
How do you write your studio's rule sheet?
On one page: a line for each edge case, a date at the top, and the same page applied at both ends of every period. Here is Alturra's, written in January before anyone worked out a rate. Copy it and change the lines you disagree with; the date matters as much as the lines, because it says which months the rules govern.
| Edge case | In the count? | Lost when? | The rule, in one line |
|---|---|---|---|
| Class pack | no | not in this number | customers, not members, in a column of their own |
| Comp | no | not in this number | a comp ends when the studio ends it |
| Staff account | no | not in this number | out of everything but class capacity |
| Freeze | yes, while under 60 days, as paused | at 60 days with no return | a pause, not a loss, until day 60 |
| Paid-in-full | yes, every month of the term | the term ends with no renewal | a member all term; cannot leave mid-term |
| Plan switch | yes | never: she stayed | neither a cancellation nor a new join |
| Intro offer | no | not in this number | a trial; enters as new when she joins |
| Two lines that travel with it | |||
| Count date | the close of the first and last day of every month; a count without a date cannot be checked | ||
| Home site | with two or more locations, one home site per member, by a written rule, never switched | ||
Then the harder half: make every report obey the sheet. The definitions live on one page and the reports get built somewhere else, which is the whole reason studio numbers don't match. A dated rule sheet keeps the vocabulary in one place, and the multi-location reporting piece covers the home-site rule once a second room opens.
What to do this week:
- Pull everyone holding anything current on the last day of last month, and sort them into the seven groups.
- Write one line for each group, and date the page.
- Recount that month's start and end under those lines, with paused members in their own column.
- Change a line only on a date, with a note of why, and recount the months it touches.
Where this lives
A rule sheet in a document decays the first time someone builds a report without reading it. The version that lasts keeps the rules where the numbers are computed, and that is how Xyzios treats them. It works with Mindbody and is an approved Mariana Tek integration, and the booking platform stays your system of record. The definitions are the studio's: you decide what counts as a member, whether a freeze counts as churn and similar rules, and the boards follow. Paused members, people with a frozen membership and no active one, are counted as their own group. On Mariana Tek the freeze end date shows on the member's profile; there is no freeze-ending reminder, so the note in the week a freeze ends stays yours to write.
It also watches the members behind the count. Current members whose attendance is slipping against their own pattern land on an at-risk list in High and Medium bands, and a short save note is drafted for those at High risk. Nothing reaches a member until you tap approve, and it does not write to anyone who has already canceled. How the save works covers the rest.
Whatever you count in, start with last month's list. Once the definitions hold still, the churn rate calculator shows what your monthly churn does to a year, and the two-minute studio check shows where your numbers stand.